Mexico

Rural Mexicans who rely on funds sent my their undocumented relatives in the U.S. are praying for Donald Trump to lose on Election Day, says Reuters. Trump has said he would deport illegal immigrants if he were president, cutting off a vital economic lifeline.

“Particularly ill-suited” to climate change, the avocado might once again become a luxury item, says The Atlantic. Avocados do poorly under exactly the kinds of conditions — higher temperatures and drier weather — that are becoming more common in the plant’s growing regions worldwide.

The government of Mexico published a regulation that requires a 5.8-percent blend of ethanol into gasoline sold in the country, with the exception of three major metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, reports the Washington Examiner. U.S. ethanol groups said the mandate represented an expansion of the market for renewable fuels in North America.

With avocado prices on the rise and American demand booming, Mexican farmers are cutting down trees to plant the fruit. “Avocado trees flourish at about the same altitude and climate as the pine and fir forests in the mountains of Michoacan, the state that produces most of Mexico’s avocados,” says The Seattle Times.

Government agencies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico can't say for sure whether the herbicides they spray on pubic lands to control invasive species are doing more harm than good, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Montana and their Canadian colleagues. The huge amount of herbicides applied by land managers every year—largely glyphosate (the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup)—may in fact prevent native species from germinating.

Last week’s triple digit temperatures and 30-mile winds wreaked havoc on California avocado orchards, right before the Industry’s biggest day of the year — the Fourth of July, says the Los Angeles Times. Growers aren’t sure yet how the heat will affect their harvest or guacamole-ingredient sales. The worst impact may come in 2017, since many of the plants lost flowers — the source of next year’s fruit.

With less than 1 percent of North American oceans under protection, the continent is falling far behind international targets to conserve ocean ecosystems, says a report out by NGOs in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

The nation’s largest produce industry groups have pledged to work together to improve farm labor conditions, in what could be the most significant step in the movement yet, says the Los Angeles Times. The Produce Marketing Association and the United Fresh Produce Association, which together represent thousands of retailers, growers and distributors, say they are considering an audit-based approach to improving working conditions, similar to that used by the apparel and electronics industries.

Mexico's 10-percent tax on sugary drinks put a dent in soda sales at first, but purchases are on the rise again, "making the country a key growth market again for soda giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo," says the Wall Street Journal. In a country with the highest per-capita soda consumption rate in the world, the tax was a public health measure aimed at high levels of obesity and diabetes.

Although the turkey was first domesticated by indigenous people in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago, when Mexico now wants turkey meat, it looks north. More than 90 percent of the turkey eaten by Mexicans comes from the United States.

India, the Philippines and Indonesia are studying soda taxes, reports Reuters, saying, "2016 may be the year of the sugar tax as several large nations consider levies on sweetened food and drinks to battle obesity and fatten government coffers."

U.S. demand for high-quality Mexican food, especially tortillas, "has created a small but growing market for the native, or landrace, corn that is central to to life" in the central plains of Oaxaca, reports the New York Times.

It's no fluke - for the second year in a row, Mexico topped Japan as the largest customer for U.S. pork exports in terms of volume, buying 31 percent of all U.S. pork shipped to foreign buyers.

Mexico's soda tax is kicking in, cutting sales of sugary beverages, says the New York Times, citing a study published in the journal BMJ this week. Mexico has the highest proportion of overweight or obese adults among developed countries, about 70 percent, and the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes, according to the OECD.

In a joint statement, Canada and Mexico said the United States must repeal its country-of-origin label (COOL) scheme or face $1.01 billion in retaliatory tariffs. “Canada and Mexico recognize that the U.S. House of Representatives repealed COOL for beef and pork last June, and we renew our call on the U.S. Senate to quickly do the same in order to avoid retaliation against U.S. exports," said the statement,

Lawmakers in Mexico are ready to soften the groundbreaking one-peso-per-liter soda tax that took effect at the beginning of 2014 and is credited with reducing consumption of sugary drinks, says the Guardian. The finance commission in the lower house of Mexico's Congress approved a tax of one-half peso on low-calorie beverages as an incentive to drink companies to offer lower-calorie options.

Corn is the staple crop of Mexico, consumed at the rate of nearly a pound per day per person, mostly as tortillas. So a court decision in August that repealed a ban on GMO corn resounded among activists and chefs, says Vice.

China will remain the leading importer of soybeans and cotton, but Mexico will be the world's largest corn importer for the rest of this decade, said the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. The United States would be the top corn exporter despite increased competition from Brazil, said the University of Missouri think tank in updating its international marketing baseline.